Boo! ‘Scary Movie 5′ scared of critics

To the surprise of absolutely no one, critics won’t get to see “Scary Movie 5″ in advance of its Friday opening, which means no opening-day reviews.

Instead it means I get to write one of those no-show blurbs for Friday’s mySA section showing that we’re not asleep at the switch — that we’re aware the film is opening. Unfortunately, I’m getting really good at this; we’ve had a no-show almost every week in 2013. That includes “A Haunted House,” the Marlon Wayans’ horror spoof from January that appears to cover the same ground as “Scary Movie 5,” i.e., “Paranormal Activity” and its many imitators.

The no-show strategy is hardly a surprise — none of the “Scary Movie” films has been screened for critics since they panned “Scary Movie 2″ in 2001.

The Wayans-powered original, which parodied all things “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” in 2000, got decent reviews. It had a 53 Tomatometer score, which isn’t terrible. Our critic, Larry Ratliff, loved it, giving it 3 1/2 jalapenos.

But critics hated the sequel, calling it a sloppy rush job. The franchise, which passed from the Wayans family to “Airplane!” guy David Zucker after the second movie, hasn’t been screened in advance since.

This doesn’t look like a wise move. For one thing, the franchise has been dormant since “Scary Movie 4″ in 2006. Folks need to be reintroduced, and to be shown that “Scary Movie 5″ is more than just the year’s second “Paranormal Activity” spoof. You know, a day late and a demon short.

The franchise apparently is determined to be up-to-the-minute in the genre it spoofs. In an interview with critic Roger Moore, “Scary 5″ star Ashley Tisdale said she thought the movie had wrapped last year, only to be called back to reshoot scenes parodying “Mama” (a surprise winter hit) and even “Evil Dead,” which only opened last week (they worked off the trailer).

That sounds like a selling point to me. So does having Charlie Sheen say “I’ve come back from worse than this” after being repeatedly racked by a vicious ghost in the TV ad. So does the fact that “A Haunted House” has a Tomatometer score of 6, ensuring its spot in the Worst Movies of 2013 list.